A gentle melancholy lurks in the wings.
The wide, high skies are here too soon…
What is this slight lurching of the seasons? This year seems to be a bit out of kilter, as if viewed through a pier-end mirror.
Unseasonably cold springs. Long, early heatwaves. Drought in autumn. Drought in winter. A bit more drought in the spring.
Rain. Floods. HAIL. Thunder and lightning.
( Not great photographs sorry – but it was one o’clock in the morning!)
It is July. We have had mornings of 8 degrees. Stubble is appearing……
……..and I have already driven past a ploughed field. Hailstones like marbles have shredded the big leaved plants, bruised the apples, snapped off the dahlias.
I was really trying to avoid doing a ‘weather’ blog, but there is simply too much going on to ignore it any longer!
I am so full of sympathy for all the people who grow food for a living. Who are trying to to feed themselves – and us. I know I am extremely lucky that it is mostly ornamental plants which have been damaged. That I am able to go to a supermarket for apples to replace my hail dented fruit. That we live in a part of the world where food is abundant and luxurious and can be flown in from almost anywhere. I often take this for granted.
On the good side…whatever difficulties you may have trying to grow any plant, anywhere in the UK – this year we can certainly, genuinely blame it on the weather.
On the bad side… I most definitely do not feel ready for it to be autumn yet. The pumpkins may be getting bigger –
– but that is not much compensation when they are ready before the runner beans…
Come on sun..
Please give us all a bit more summer for our holidays..
And the ugly… Well, I was going to post a picture of these prematurely autumnal looking leaves…
But really? Its not that bad! Just a few leaves. I need to shake myself up, sweep away the leaves and focus on the lovely bits. Put on blinkers as I walk past the stubble fields.
After all, the dahlias are recovering – and they are not ugly, but simply lovely.
Lots of Pots 